Three Daughters: A Novel (6 page)

Some days the sun was so intense that it made the air buzz and sizzle, but the nights were always blessedly cool. The night mist made the ground damp and cold but they prayed for it so the grains wouldn’t become brittle and fall to the ground. Twice a day, the women started a little fire and held some of the wheat heads over it, rubbing off the husks between their hands and then feasting on the new wheat.

There was some benefit in being busy all day and in new surroundings. Khalil seemed content to be out of their routine and adjusted well to the bustle around him.

There was a respite before the grapes and figs were ready and the Mishwes returned home to the comfort of a bed. Two days before they were to start again, Nadeem brought a package for Miriam. When she failed to open it, he undid it himself and she saw that it contained a heavily embroidered vest. She left it lying where he put it and said nothing. Something about that gaudy item made her despair. The house still had no proper kitchen or cistern. He had used all of her money for the soap and now he had wasted some of their meager funds on a useless vest. “Where would I wear such a thing?” she asked at the last possible moment before they went to sleep. Even as she said it, she remembered her own mother excoriating her father in the same bitter tone, but she was too anxious for the future to feel immediate remorse. Her pregnancy made the vest even more ludicrous.

Nadeem began to bounce the vest in his large hand as if it were growing heavier. “Wear it to visit your mother. Or for the feast of Nebi Musa.”

“My mother would have more to say about it than I.” She lay down and turned her body away from him.

“Well,” he said, still good-humored, “I could try to sell it. Give it to Sahadi to put in his shop.”

“Do that then, for I’ve no use for it.” She had not meant to sound so harsh, but his dogged good humor made her anxious. She had put her faith and future in the hands of a man who was not realistic. As she lay there battling her own thoughts, his breathing became rhythmic. A jackal filching grapes from a nearby orchard sounded his stupid, mournful cry. The baby gave a solid kick against her back, sending a ping of pain through her legs. She began to cry softly into her pillow. In the morning, the vest was gone.

The grape harvest, beginning in late summer, was the happiest of the season. The
kasr
in the orchards where Nadeem and Miriam slept was slightly cleaner and more comfortable than the one in the wheat fields. There was a tiny sunken pit for a cooking fire and another to hide the drying crop. All the Mishwes came, even Umm Jameel, and Miriam felt more carefree than she had the entire summer. Zareefa made light of everything. “Don’t worry if he lost the money,” she said to Miriam, mentioning the unmentionable. “He’ll make it again.” She poked all around Miriam’s stomach. “What? Are you having twins? You’re so big and still four months to go.”

The best grapes in Palestine came from Tamleh and Hebron. Even through the fierce heat, the clusters grew succulent and abundant. They hired a dozen girls from the countryside to help with sorting and preparing the raisins, first softening them in lye water to tenderize the skin and then coating them with olive oil to keep the insects away. The Mishwes dried almost their entire crop and sold it to the Germans, who provided the crates for shipment and paid three cents a pound. The rest of the crop sold as table grapes and was transported to Jaffa in panniers by donkey.

Nadeem and Miriam worked continuously through August and into September. All three were browned from the sun and Khalil’s fine baby hair was bleached at the ends. It was an adjustment to go back to their house. There was still no word from France and Nadeem’s spirits were less buoyant. He had to make a decision whether to take another mason’s job, working on a new Franciscan building in Bethel, where he would earn a dollar a day, or to stick with his plan to find a more open-ended way to earn a living.

One evening, Nadeem asked his father-in-law for the use of the wagon. He spent several days amassing merchandise from village farmers and artisans. Before dawn on the third day, he packed the wagon carefully with a dozen crates of figs and raisins and some of the clay
makilas
that Jirius sold in his shop, packing them with straw so they wouldn’t knock together. He included some shoes in various sizes from the shoemaker, some mats and rugs from the weavers on El Megnuneh Street, and several jars of freshly pressed olive oil. Without asking questions, Miriam rose and made him coffee. When she realized he wouldn’t volunteer where he was going, she packed some food for him—olives, cheese, bread, a few sweets, and fruit. He left without a word and she watched him clatter down the path that led to the carriage road until he was out of sight.

He returned three days later and the wagon was empty. His face was ashen with fatigue and his eyes red and vacant.

“Are you ill?” She wanted to ask a dozen questions. But his manner kept her silent.

“I’m not ill,” he answered with unnatural curtness. “I’m just tremendously tired. If you could just make me a cup of tea.” When she brought the tea, he was already asleep.

He had fallen into bed as he was and he slept for fourteen hours. The next day he repeated the process of gathering goods, packing the wagon, leaving before dawn only to return several days later with an empty wagon. Miriam had no idea where he went or where he slept. From the look of him—he always returned filthy and pale—she surmised that he walked, pulling the donkey along and slept out of doors, if at all, guarding his merchandise. When Umm Jameel found out her son was peddling from village to village, she was very agitated.

“A
mugahbeen
,” she wailed.
Mugahbeen
, the word for “danger,” was the name given to those who traveled through dangerous defiles between mountains. His mother had a right to be frightened. The next time he left with his wagon, he was robbed.

When Miriam saw him approaching still several yards away, she was certain it was a stranger bent on harming her. He was caked with mud and it had obliterated any color or design in the fabric of his clothes. His hair was also matted with mud and the perspiration streaks crisscrossing his face made him look sinister. “
Ya Allah!
” Miriam put her hand to her mouth to keep from screaming and then, when she realized it was Nadeem, she froze in place.

“Don’t touch me.” He held out a hand to stop her from approaching. “I have to bathe.”

“I’ll heat some water,” she whispered and turned away, but not before she saw a look in his eyes that made her heart lurch and her eyes fill. It was a look she had never seen on his face before. He looked frightened as a child and also defeated.

When he had bathed and drunk three cups of hot tea, he told her to throw away the clothes he had taken off. “I don’t want them,” he said vehemently. “Burn them. I struggled in those clothes against . . . against fate. Against injustice!” His face reddened with emotion.

“Against fate?” she asked mystified.

“The ones who took my money and the goods, they weren’t stealing from Nadeem Mishwe. They had no grudge against me. I was just an opportunity to them, a faceless source of easy wealth. This was gratuitous, random evil. That makes it worse.”

“You weren’t the master of your fate?” she asked in a soft, sympathetic voice. She remembered that conversation in the beginning of their marriage when he told her laughingly that he would intervene with fate to bring wealth into their lives. As she considered her husband’s once trusting face, now twisted with disappointment, she felt a battle within herself as well. She wanted to believe in him, but it was difficult. Perhaps he was wrong not to go back to his trade.

She was against his going again, but his dark determination kept her from speaking her mind. A few days later when she saw him gathering more merchandise, she handed him a gun. “My father brought this for you. He says you shouldn’t go again without it.”

“I don’t want a gun. The idea of killing someone . . . I don’t know. Perhaps it’s better not to have a weapon.”

“Please, Nadeem, take it.” And when he still hesitated: “Do it because I ask it of you.”

“All right.” He brought her against him and buried his face in her hair. She became aware of his unique smell and the way he felt against her when they were upright—his shoulder blades, the strength of his arms. It was so seldom that they touched each other outside of the bedroom, even to say good-bye. He took the gun and slipped it inside his wide belt. “I’ll take it because you want me to.”

In late fall of 1900, the sirocco lasted three weeks. Each morning the clouds collected in dark groups above the mountaintops. On the worst day, the wind formed into columns and coated every surface with grit. Miriam, alone and seven months pregnant, couldn’t shake the feeling that evil was in store. She tried to dispel her anxiety by giving her precious room a thorough cleaning. She removed the furniture to do a better job. She placed the brine pots and store jars out last, covering the mouths with linen and intending to bring them in quickly. She dry washed the smooth walls from ceiling to floor and did the same to the floors, feeling gratified to see the beautifully fitted stones free of dust. She rolled up the straw mats and beat them over a line that Nadeem had strung between two trees in the back.

In the midst of replacing the rugs, she heard a scream from the courtyard. Khalil, who had learned to pull himself upright and take a few steps, had fallen and skinned his knee. It wasn’t a serious scrape but a pebble had become embedded in the softness of his flesh and removing it caused bleeding and heightened her apprehension. She washed the wound and spent the next half hour restraining him from going outside to dirty it again. She felt less anxious indoors, away from the angry weather, and they lay down together on her bed and both fell asleep.

As the sun was setting, Nadeem returned from one of his trips. He was more exhausted than usual, dragging one foot after the other as if the next step would be his last. He neared the house and was greeted by a rancid stench so powerful he walked around to find the source. It was the cheese that was causing the worst odor, but the coverings had blown off all the food jars and the contents were covered with a scum of brownish-gray dust.

“Miriam!” He began calling while still outside. He had never raised his voice to her, but the sight of so much waste appalled him. “Miriam!”

She awoke disoriented and felt for Khalil, who had drifted to the end of the bed. The bandage was blood soaked and had stained the bed covering.

“Miriam!” What now? Another accident? She didn’t remember ever hearing that urgent quality in her husband’s voice. The room was still in disarray, rugs half-rolled, the bins in the middle of the room. “Look at this!” Nadeem was holding one of the cheese pots. “Have you lost your senses? Why would you put food outdoors in this weather? What were you thinking of?”

She couldn’t answer him. A wave of humiliation began at the front of her head and spread like a wash of shameful paint over her body. “I was cleaning,” she offered softly. He looked so dirty and bedraggled she barely recognized him. His eyes looked haunted and the pupils were unnaturally large.

“Cleaning what? All the cheese for the winter is ruined. All the work for nothing.” He went out of the house and began dumping the contents of each pot, repeating the words
a waste of money, a waste of time
. Miriam held his arm but he shrugged her off so violently she had to grab his shirt not to fall. “Please wait!” But he wasn’t listening. With unusual strength he was able to lift the largest jars and fling their contents to the winds. Within minutes all of their winter’s stores—the lentils and wheat, the olives and cheese, the olive oil, the pickled vegetables, the beans, the dried fruit—everything was strewn over the parched earth.

At that time of year, the flocks had been driven far inland looking for ever-vanishing greenery and water. A little later, the milk would be needed for the newborn in the flock. Goat’s milk would remain virtually unavailable until early December. Almost in mockery, the wind changed direction and velvety warmth caressed their skin. Nadeem’s spent anger and fatigue were palpable. It was more than the loss of the food. Miriam wanted to help him but instead—oh, God, almost against her will—she also wanted to make it worse.

“You’re one to talk of waste,” she began in a breathless voice. “I made a mistake. Khalil was hurt and I became distracted, but I didn’t willfully send merchandise to a stranger with no hope of being paid for it. I didn’t do anything that foolish.” As she was uttering the words, her heart was sinking in sorrow. It was exactly this recrimination that had seemed so cruel coming from Umm Jameel.

Instead of angering him, the accusation made him calm. “I should not have been so harsh,” he said thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t have scolded you except that I’m unusually tired and the walk home in these dust storms is almost unbearable. But as for your opinion that I acted like a fool, you’re mistaken. M. Freneau will pay for the merchandise and generously, too. Where I have been a fool is in expecting my wife to have understanding and loyalty. That’s where I was cheated.” With this he walked toward the house. It was only when they were both back inside and she had begun the fire for tea that she saw the gash on his cheek and another on his arm, which was bulging at an odd angle. “You’re hurt.” She sucked in her breath at a loss as to what to do first.

“I was attacked at Abu Ghush,” he said dully. “Three of them against me, but they didn’t kill me, which is a blessing. However,” he added in a quivering voice, “I killed one of them.” She put his face next to her breasts and inspected the wound as if he were a child. “It needs cleaning.” She went in search of a clean rag and water and dabbed at the wound repeatedly until he cried out in pain.

“Gently,” he admonished. “No need to scrub it.”

“
Ya Allah,”
she said tearfully. “I’m sorry.”

He fell asleep as she worked on him and she had to drag him to the bed and arrange him. He slept almost twenty hours, during which she ran in frequently to watch over him. When he had slept himself out, he prepared to walk to Bethel to see if they could still use a mason for the Franciscan building. “I have to go back to masonry, after all,” he said. “I want to live to see our new child.” His voice had the leaden evenness of defeat.